Discoveries

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Remember that time in 4th grade when my class had a contest to see who could best sing Bryan Adams’ “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”?

I suppose I haven’t mentioned it yet.

Any willing participant had a chance to stand in front of the class with the Walkman headphones on and sing along with Bryan, to the cheers or jeers of her peers.

This was obviously very awkward. First of all, whoever was singing was the only one who could hear the track; to the 30 other people in the room, all they were hearing was an unaccompanied, nervous, pre-adolescent warble. Secondly, we were 10-years old. The most passionate thing I could think of was footsy. However, as I remember vividly, this didn’t stop one girl from closing her eyes and feigning Whitney Houston.

Yeaaaah, I’d fight for you… [fist pump]

To me, Bryan Adams remained frozen in memory, frozen in time, in that Pomona Elementary classroom – that is, until last year when my friend Duane reintroduced me.

Oh, friends. What I had been MISSING OUT ON all those years.

Duane knows me well enough to know that he would need to be sneaky, so he started by sending me a few songs that our guy Bry had written with Gretchen Peters – one of my favorite writers in the history of the universe (remember, I wrote about her here). From the first tentative listen to those tracks, all doubt was blown away:

Bryan Adams is where it’s at. His songs are fantastic.

I have a short list of people that I have to see in concert someday – and in addition to Patty Griffin (which will FINALLY happen at the end of this month), Shania Twain, and Phil Collins, Bryan Adams has earned his place.

A few months ago, PZC taught me about auto antonyms – although I think that I prefer their less-popular name, contronyms. Any non-word-lovers out there can just call them self-contradictions (but I will judge you).

What is an auto antonym? It’s a word that can mean the opposite of itself.

IMPOSSIBLE, you say.

NOT WITH JESUS, I say.

Or, just, it’s not impossible. Because it’s truth. Look at this whole list of auto antonyms I found – and tell me that you aren’t captivated. I mean, SOMEONE besides Pauly and me must find this word-nerdage fascinating?

Words! That mean one thing! AND! The total opposite thing! Auto antonyms are the “choose your own adventure” of vocabulary.

The next time someone calls me lurid, I’m giving him a kiss on the lips.*

I still have not bought a converter box. I knew that I wouldn’t get any channels this morning – not that I cared about anything more than “Good Morning America” (“The Today Show” will never compare); still, I flipped on the TV just to see what it looked like.

On Facebook, sometimes users are required to type in a word to verify that one is indeed a human and not a cyborg or a hacker. It’s called a “captcha” – get it, like, “capture,” but all loosey-goosey and free-style? Say it with attitude – move your shoulders with each syllable. “Captcha.”

But I only just now realized that it’s pronounced “captcha”; when you read something over and over, but are never required to say it out loud, your brain can play tricks on you. And this whole time, in my head, I’ve been calling it a “captchka.” “Captchka” makes absolutely no sense – PLUS, with 5 consonants in a row, it’s almost impossible to pronounce. What was I thinking?

I have a little electronic key on my key-ring that unlocks certain doors at the office. When I included it in Friday’s video, I realized that I did not, in fact, know what it was called; you see my slight hesitation at 1:33. In my head, I have been calling it a “pre-farb,” which is quite possibly the ugliest word in the made-up English language*. But today I was set straight: it’s a “key fob.”

There’s an old Patty Loveless song with the line, “It gets melancholy.” Until very recently, I thought she was singing about “a kid-smellin’ collie” – which could have been right…?

There are words that slide comfortably into my written lexicon that I’ve discovered that I have to pause before pronouncing out loud: archetype, posthumous, banal, wan.

I have a new goal of being able to spell, with no hesitation, the following:– coup d’état– hors d’oeuvres– onomatopoeia

On Friday, on the way back from Taos, Mom and I were driving north on a 2-lane highway through the desert. Snow covered the ground as far as the eye could see, coating the horizon in a uniform white. But suddenly, east of the highway, something caught my eye.

“Mom, turn around!” I cried.

“What? No, I can’t,” she responded.

“You have to. We’ll always wonder if we don’t go back.”

She thought for a second, and then whipped the wheel to the left. With a mighty U-turn, we changed direction, and then turned east on a driveway covered in snow. We were adventurers, seeking a new frontier, seeking the truth. With no assurance that our noble steed of a Toyota Matrix would not get stuck in a snowdrift, or that a pack of Rottweilers would not be sicced on us, we boldy forged ahead. And our discovery was… beyond words.

Curious? Here’s a close-up of the Hummer-Limo, or what I like to call “The Hummo.”

Oh, and this was parked off to the side. Just in case.

What. in. the. world. This was an amazing discovery.

And no, I have no idea what it all means.

The fact that I am posting this blog means that I have returned to society. I am in gelid Alamosa, CO, with my friend Hannah. And in case you’re curious what “the wild” has done to me, this is what I look like today: